Generations young and old alike have fawned over the dime novel exploits of the James Gang, Buffalo Bill and other wild west legends. It is a fascination that has spawned more than a 100 years.
The freedom of riding the range has also long been romanticized in the lyrics of country songs. Longview’s own Ian Tyson has had a storied music career driven in no small part by his songs about life in the saddle.
Turner Valley resident Doris Daley has found her own way to keep the traditions and imagination of the west alive. She does it through cowboy poetry and she has just released “West Word Ho!” a collection of some of her favourite poems of cowboy culture.
“There’s some old favourites, lots of new material, there are even some song lyrics in there,” Daley said.
She’s recently been collaborating with one songwriter in Texas and another in Saskatchewan providing them western-themed lyrics for their new compositions — some of which can be found in the pages of “West Word Ho!”
For Daley, a fascination with telling stories and expressing feelings through rhyme is something she discovered at a young age.
“Even as a little girl, I was the kid at school that made little words rhyme and created little paragraphs and made them rhyme,” she explained.
With her new collection of work, Daley said she hopes it will open even more doors for her in terms of being able to give readings of her work in a variety of interesting locations.
“I have, on average, a couple of gigs a week,” she said of her performance schedule. “It could be for a Rotary Club in Calgary or a commissioned thing for a family in B.C. or off to a festival in Texas, who knows. Of interest to me is not every gig is in the western part of the continent. I find many easterners have this love of the west and this romantic idea of the west. So I’ve done jobs in places like Virginia, Quebec, Georgia and Ontario.”
While much of Daley’s poetry deals with a bygone era of western life, she divulged some of it touches on more contemporary themes.
“I have got a poem called ‘Dancing with the Stars’,” she explained. “It’s a story of what would happen if a rodeo cowboy was one of the contestants. I’ve got a poem that’s a look at all the fancy shmancy coffee shops that all of us go to. Then I’ve got more serious stuff about, what is a Westerner?”
Ordering information for “West Word Ho!” and other books containing her work and audio recordings of live performances can be found on Daley’s website www.dorisdaley.com
